IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/108536.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A springboard for new citizens: universal basic capital and a citizen’s day

Author

Listed:
  • Le Grand, Julian

Abstract

In recent years there have been several proposals from academics, think tanks, and politicians for a universal grant of basic capital (UBC) to be awarded to every citizen. There has been one UBC programme that was actually implemented: the British Child Trust Fund, started in 2003 by a Labour Government and abolished by a Coalition Government in 2011. This paper discusses the case for a UBC, focusing attention on its potential for helping young people to attain long-term positive outcomes in several dimensions of life, from employment to health. By looking at the experience of the Child Trust Fund, the paper also highlights lessons for how a UBC should be implemented in practice. It proposes a Citizen’s Day: a coming-of-age occasion, marked by a ceremony at which a substantial UBC is awarded, along with the right to vote.

Suggested Citation

  • Le Grand, Julian, 2020. "A springboard for new citizens: universal basic capital and a citizen’s day," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 108536, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:108536
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/108536/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Darrick Hamilton & William Darity, 2010. "Can ‘Baby Bonds’ Eliminate the Racial Wealth Gap in Putative Post-Racial America?," The Review of Black Political Economy, Springer;National Economic Association, vol. 37(3), pages 207-216, September.
    2. Hills, John & Bastagli, Francesca & Cowell, Frank & Glennerster, Howard & Karagiannaki, Eleni & McKnight, Abigail, 2013. "Wealth distribution, accumulation and policy," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 51284, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. Atkinson, Anthony B., 2015. "Inequality: what can be done?," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 101810, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ellie Benton & Anne Power, 2021. "CASE Annual Report 2020," CASE Reports casereport136, Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, LSE.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Nora Lustig, 2017. "Fiscal Policy, Income Redistribution and Poverty Reduction in Low and Middle Income Countries," Commitment to Equity (CEQ) Working Paper Series 54, Tulane University, Department of Economics.
    2. Venkatasubramanian, Venkat & Luo, Yu & Sethuraman, Jay, 2015. "How much inequality in income is fair? A microeconomic game theoretic perspective," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 435(C), pages 120-138.
    3. Anthony B. Atkinson, 2018. "Wealth and inheritance in Britain from 1896 to the present," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 16(2), pages 137-169, June.
    4. Aswini Kumar Mishra & Vedant Bhardwaj, 2021. "Wealth distribution and accounting for changes in wealth inequality: empirical evidence from India, 1991–2012," Economic Change and Restructuring, Springer, vol. 54(2), pages 585-620, May.
    5. Qingjie Xia & Shi Li & Lina Song, 2017. "Urban Consumption Inequality in China, 1995–2013," Working Papers id:12239, eSocialSciences.
    6. Menta, Giorgia & Lepinteur, Anthony & Clark, Andrew E. & Ghislandi, Simone & D'Ambrosio, Conchita, 2023. "Maternal genetic risk for depression and child human capital," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    7. Marta de la Cuesta-González & Cristina Ruza & José M. Rodríguez-Fernández, 2020. "Rethinking the Income Inequality and Financial Development Nexus. A Study of Nine OECD Countries," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(13), pages 1-18, July.
    8. Guenther, Isabel & Tetteh-Baah, Samuel Kofi, 2019. "The impact of discrimination on redistributive preferences and productivity: experimental evidence from the United States," VfS Annual Conference 2019 (Leipzig): 30 Years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall - Democracy and Market Economy 203652, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    9. Elinder, Mikael & Erixson, Oscar & Waldenström, Daniel, 2018. "Inheritance and wealth inequality: Evidence from population registers," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 17-30.
    10. Boarini, Romina & Causa, Orsetta & Fleurbaey, Marc & Grimalda, Gianluca & Woolard, Ingrid, 2018. "Reducing inequalities and strengthening social cohesion through inclusive growth: A roadmap for action," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 12, pages 1-26.
    11. Jenkins, Stephen P., 2015. "The income distribution in the UK: a picture of advantage and disadvantage," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 103980, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    12. Tejada, O. & Álvarez-Mozos, M., 2018. "Graphs and (levels of) cooperation in games: Two ways how to allocate the surplus," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 114-122.
    13. Brandolini, Andrea & Micklewright, John, 2020. "Tony Atkinson's New Book, Measuring Poverty around the World: Some Further Reflections," IZA Discussion Papers 12890, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    14. Alejandro Esteller & Amedeo Piolatto & Matthew D. Rablen, 2016. "Taxing high-income earners: tax avoidance and mobility," IFS Working Papers W16/07, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    15. Rory Horner & David Hulme, 2019. "From International to Global Development: New Geographies of 21st Century Development," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 50(2), pages 347-378, March.
    16. Leonidas Kyriakides & Maria Eliophotou & Evi Charalambous, 2022. "The effect of educational systems on differences in the performance of children of different backgrounds and on the improvement of their learning outcomes, with reference to Cyprus," Cyprus Economic Policy Review, University of Cyprus, Economics Research Centre, vol. 16(2), pages 57-90, December.
    17. Adnan Abdulaziz Shahir & Francesco Figari, 2021. "The effect of fiscal drag on income distribution and work incentives: A microsimulation analysis on selected African countries," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2021-167, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    18. John Komlos, 2021. "Macroeconomic Inequality from Reagan to Trump. Market Power, Wage Repression, Asset Price Inflation, and Industrial Decline," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 97(318), pages 450-453, September.
    19. Guillermo Cruces & Gary S. Fields & David Jaume & Mariana Viollaz, 2015. "The growth-employment-poverty nexus in Latin America in the 2000s: Cross-country analysis," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2015-110, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    20. Fabio Clementi & Mauro Gallegati & Lisa Gianmoena & Simone Landini & Joseph E. Stiglitz, 2019. "Mis-measurement of inequality: a critical reflection and new insights," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 14(4), pages 891-921, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    wealth inequality; basic capital; basic income;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I30 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:108536. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.